Andy Reid Prays for a Good Start... and No Injuries

Its now over five months since we've seen or heard anything of our favorite little irish fella but to reassure us that he's still around he's popped up on the official site over the last couple of days with a short audio interview and stunning photo.

He's certainly looking fit and he's definitely someone that we've expecting great things of come August. There was talk, before Christmas, of him becoming a Charlton legend but things haven't turned out quite as expected. Just when he was starting to look good and find his best position in the side playing in the hole behind Darren in December he started to have hamstring problems.

He made a comeback in January for the home game with Middlesbrough on Jan. 13th but that proved to be his only game under Pardew. An operation followed in early March to remove scar tissue from his problematic hamstring and he was told not to play again till next season.

So to recap, he played in 16 of our first 18 games and after 13 games with not a single goal from either a midfielder or defender he broke the duck and scored the equaliser in the 1-1 with Everton in November. He scored again in the next game at Sheffield when a 2-1 defeat really told the team the true state of their problems. Three games later he played in the home disaster against Liverpool when his problems began and we didn't see him again till the Middlesbrough game. Another bad result that day and that was it for Reid for the season.

The good news would appear to be that he's staying put and not wanting to jump ship. And for this we can probably thank his injury problems as he's been out of sight of potential buyers.

The big question remains, of course, will he fully recover from the injury and can Pards rely upon him for a full season? Hamstring injuries are more likely to reoccur once damaged and one reported reason that Jol let him go was that he always seemed to be injured. If you want to read more about hamstring injuries there's a good article here with diagrams.

Remembering his time with Spurs, he only featured in 13 Premiership games in his last full season there in 2005/06 and only made a total of 20 starts in a season and a half since joining them from Forest in January 2005. So injury prone or not, its likely that Pardew will want to have a back-up ready and waiting just in case. A return for Murphy in a Bent deal? We all hope not!